Attack Decay Sustain Release

Interscope / Wichita; 2007

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Can we call a moratorium on using the phrase "rock artists getting into electronic music" as a pejorative, unless you're going to chuck out, I dunno, Sweet Exorcist or that guy who used to be in the Housemartins or dozens of other beloved post-rave producers? Simian Mobile Disco were as deep in rock as a pair of quarrymen, even if you'd never know it to listen to this record. James Ford and James Shaw got their start in workman-like indie four-piece Simian, lost to the discount bins had SMD not branched sideways into success in the populist end of dance. That success first came with Justice's remix of Simian's "Never Be Alone" (titled "We Are Your Friends"), released on Ed Banger-- a label which, for many people, might as well be a rock imprint. And as a production team, SMD did the rock remix thing and helmed the debut album from neon enthusiasts and indie rock serial daters the Klaxons.

But Myths of the Near Future was, even accounting for taste, a tinny din. It was the sound of its producers trying to futilely collate the rapid-fire ideas of a young band without the taste or craft to execute them without it sounding like a drunken bar fight. And Justice wields dance music as if fending off zombie attackers at the DJ booth. Meanwhile, SMD's excellent debut album as a stand-alone group, Attack Decay Sustain Release, is for dancing, not moshing-- especially if that's dancing in front of your bedroom mirror to the radio, like Tony Manero, primping before hitting the town.

What makes SMD a better pop band than Justice or the Klaxons is their commitment to clean danceable beats (the electro arpeggios of "Sleep Deprivation" clang as loudly and brightly as a Max Martin production) and lighthearted and immediate hooks ("Hot Dog" turns robotized double-dutch taunts, motor-revving bass, and stampeding drums into the rollerskate chant the last Rapture album couldn't quite reach). But what really sells Attack Decay Sustain Release is Simian Mobile Disco's unerring devotion to always-hooky pastiche in the name of a good time, and to pop's unbreakable formalism when it comes to things like track length and the need for a kick-ass chorus.

Justice and the Klaxons are pastiche artists, too, but SMD's vision is friendlier, scornful of "weren't the '80s wacky" irony, with their ears wide open to such less-than-punk sounds as Bobby O's hi-NRG, Information Society's pure energy, Sweet Sensation's freefalling freestyle, and every lite-brite shade of pop-house and techno in the spectrum. "It's the Beat" falls over itself combining all of the above plus a New Order morse code bleep, a numerical-minded Kraftwerk squelch-melody, a Technotronic fanfare riff, and a rap from a Go! Teamer who wants to be Roxanne Shante. And forget rock, except for maybe the martial tempos, because there's nothing aggressive (read: "overly masculine") about SMD's mix, and nothing purposefully ugly, either. "I Believe" and "Love" both shamelessly borrow the classic big-fey-voice-over-booming-synth dynamics of Depeche Mode at their most pop and Erasure at their most soulful.

For SMD, electronic music begins and ends with the radio, from Soft Cell to Crystal Waters, and so its over-the-top friendliness, immediacy, and excitement has a cramped, amped-up hysteria, like all great bubblegum. (It's also short like a bubblegum album-- 10 tracks in under 40 minutes, most songs being perfect A-side lengths for seven-inch singles.) And even as prototypical indie kid pop-cultural curators-- who else is so into old bubblegum sounds?-- SMD's knock-out craft just might win them a wide American audience. After all, another indie pop duo (who used to record for Stereolab's label!) went on to become one of the top-shelf post-rave pastiche pop acts and to sell out arena crowds. And if SMD aren't quite Daft Punk, Attack Decay Sustain Release is a good sign that their Discovery might be right around the corner.